Escape Clause: A Virgil Flowers Novel, Book 9

The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. Two large and very rare Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they've been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others - as Virgil is about to find out.

The Wrong Side of Goodbye: A Harry Bosch Novel, Book 21

Harry Bosch is California's newest private investigator. He doesn't advertise, he doesn't have an office, and he's picky about who he works for, but it doesn't matter. His chops from 30 years with the LAPD speak for themselves. Soon one of Southern California's biggest moguls comes calling. The reclusive billionaire has less than six months to live and a lifetime of regrets. He hires Bosch to find out whether he has an heir.

The Night Crew

Best-selling author John Sandford takes all the action and suspense of his acclaimed Prey novels and heads west to the dark gleam of L.A.- where the Night Crew works. A mobile unit of video freelancers, they prowl the midnight streets to sell to the highest network bidder. Murders. Robberies. High-speed chases. For them, it is an exhilerating life. But tonight, two deaths will change everything.

No Man's Land: John Puller Series

John Puller's mother disappeared nearly 30 years ago. Despite an intensive search and investigation, she was never seen again. But new allegations have come to light suggesting that Puller's father - now suffering from dementia and living in a VA hospital - may have murdered his wife. Puller is officially barred from working on the case and faces a potential court-martial if he disobeys the order, but he knows he can't sit this investigation out.

Night School: A Jack Reacher Novel, Book 21

It's 1996, and Reacher is still in the army. In the morning they give him a medal, and in the afternoon they send him back to school. That night he's off the grid. Out of sight, out of mind. Two other men are in the classroom - an FBI agent and a CIA analyst. Each is a first-rate operator, each is fresh off a big win, and each is wondering what the hell they are doing there. Then they find out: A jihadist sleeper cell in Hamburg, Germany, has received an unexpected visitor - a Saudi courier seeking safe haven while waiting to rendezvous with persons unknown.

Dead Watch

In Washington, D.C., a cell phone rings. The White House chief of staff needs Jacob Winter now. His chief investigator and an Army Intelligence veteran, Winter knows how to move quickly and decisively, but he's never faced a problem like this. The disappearances are bad, but when the blackened body shows up barbed-wired to a tree, Winter knows there is much worse to come. And soon enough, there is. Large forces are at work, determined to do whatever it takes to achieve their ends.

The Whistler

Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption. But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined.

Home: Myron Bolitar Series, Book 11

A decade ago, kidnappers grabbed two boys from wealthy families and demanded ransom, then went silent. No trace of the boys ever surfaced. For 10 years their families have been left with nothing but painful memories and a quiet desperation for the day that has finally, miraculously arrived: Myron Bolitar and his friend Win believe they have located one of the boys, now a teenager. Where has he been for 10 years, and what does he know about the day, more than half a life ago, when he was taken?

Ricki says:"I have so missed Myron and Win and now they are back. Yeah"

American Assassin

Before he was considered a CIA superagent, before he was thought of as a terrorists worst nightmare, and before he was both loathed and admired by the politicians on Capitol Hill, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world . . . and then tragedy struck.

IQ

A resident of one of LA's toughest neighborhoods uses his blistering intellect to solve the crimes the LAPD ignores. East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the neighborhood's high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, lost children unrecovered. But someone from the neighborhood has taken it upon himself to help solve the cases the police can't or won't touch. They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence.

Saturn Run

The year is 2066. A Caltech intern inadvertently notices an anomaly from a space telescope - something is approaching Saturn and decelerating. Space objects don't decelerate. Spaceships do. A flurry of top-level government meetings produces the inescapable conclusion: Whatever built that ship is at least one hundred years ahead in hard and soft technology, and whoever can get their hands on it exclusively and bring it back will have an advantage so large, no other nation can compete.

Uncaged: The Singular Menace, Book 1

Shay Remby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife, searching for her brother, Odin. Odin’s a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal-rights activists hit a Singular Corp. research lab in Eugene, Oregon. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog. When Shay gets a frantic 3 a.m. phone call from Odin - talking about evidence of unspeakable experiments, and a ruthless corporation, and how he must hide - she’s concerned.

Publisher's Summary

Virgil Flowers kicked around for a while before joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. First it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport brought him into the BCA, promising him, "We'll only give you the hard stuff."

He's been doing the hard stuff for three years now, but never anything like this.

In the small town of Bluestem, a house way up on a ridge explodes into flames, its owner, a man named Judd, trapped inside. There are a lot of reasons to hate him, Flowers discovers. In fact, he concludes, you'd probably have to dig around to find a person who doesn't despise Judd.

And that isn't even why Flowers came to Bluestem. Three weeks before, there'd been another murder, two, in fact, a doctor and his wife, the doctor found propped up in his backyard, both eyes shot out. Flowers knows two things: this wasn't a coincidence, and it had to be personal.

But just how personal is something even he doesn't realize, and may not find out until too late. Because the next victim may be himself.

A real treat, this newest of John Sandford, and I've listened to them all. Full of twists and surprises. I finished and immediately replayed it, to listen for clues and connections I missed the first time around (many!). The narrator doesn't have Richard Ferrone's gravelly voice, but has an effective tone and pace of his own that I got used to within a few minutes. Appropriately, he sounds just like midwesterners I've known, so his characters are convincing and the narration is enjoyable. Yup, a real treat!

I'm one of those listeners who buys the Davenport audiobooks the day they are released. So I admit to being a little skeptical - and concerned - when I learned that Sandford would publish a book without Lucas as its main character. Trusting that the author wouldn't completely abandon his loyal base, though, I took a chance on this book and was happily surprised.

For one thing, this is a Lucas Davenport universe. Our favorite detective makes a few phone cameos, and Flowers works for him. The setting is upper mid-west, with all its local flavor.

Flowers is an intriguing character. The son of a preacher, he ponders God each night before he drifts off to sleep and can quote bible verses with the best of 'em, yet he's not really religious, at least not in any outward way. He has an innovative way of trying to solve crimes by writing pseudo-fictional stories which include facsimiles of himself, his suspects, and the victims, basically asking himself, "If I were writing a story about this crime, what would come next? What about this 'story' doesn't make sense?"

But Flowers is also battle-worn, tough, cynical, and funny. His personality is a lot like Lucas's, so again, Davenport readers won't have to do a 180 to get to like the new guy.

Like most folks, I'd be happy if Sandford only wrote Prey books, but if writing Flowers books helps Sandford avoid Prey burnout, I have no problem with reading more about Flowers' adventures.

As an avid Lucas Davenport fan and absolute lover of Richard Ferrone's gravelly baritone, I was a little leery of Sandford's last offering. But I absolutely loved it from the bone chilling start to the satisfying finish. Unlike Lucas Davenport, who we all love, but frankly know too well, Virgil Flowers comes into this novel as a vaguely familiar character who we learn to appreciate as the mystery unfolds. A couple of cameos by Davenport make it feel like a familiar Prey sequel. And contrary to some other reviewers, I Thought Eric Conger's narration was simply perfect.

This is classic John Sandford read (or listen in this case). He uses Det. Virgil Flowers as the protagonist instead of Lucas Davenport, but he has the usual interesting story with lots of bodies and a mystery to boot. Flowers makes an interesting kind of hero and the rural Minnesota ambience is well done. I enjoyed this immensely. Just the kind of thing for a long road trip.

I purchased Dark Of The Moon not realizing that I had already read the book previously. Since I almost never reread even very good books, I was disappointed and almost tossed it back on the shelf. Still, having paid good money and all....

As it turned out, even with the drawback of knowing exactly where the book was going, I still had a great time listening. Sandford writes wonderful characters, not just Flowers and Davenport, but all the supporting players. They are sketched deftly with artful details and they are always consistent. In addition, his plots are tightly constructed, and his action sequences remain tense even when you know what the outcome will be. In fact it was a pleasure to be able to pay somewhat closer attention to how the author fashioned the whole story from beginning to end.

I am glad Richard Ferrone did not do this narration. I love his work on the Davenport books, but Flowers needed a voice which was not a constant reminder of Lucas. The reader did a fine job, and Virgil now has a very satisfying vocal persona of his own. I loved the subtle variation in midwestern accent which Conger used to define character, and I never had any problem knowing who was speaking.

John Sandford trots out a new detective, Virgil Flowers, in the Dark of the Moon. A bit player in one of Sandford's previous Prey books, Flowers holds his own as a down-home, good old boy detective tasked with solving a series of gruesome murders in rural Bluestem, Minnesota. The mystery roars along in typical Sandford fashion while Virgil's romance with the sister of the small town's sheriff heats up. I am no fan of romance novels but the steamy love scene in a secluded swimming hole is, well, hot until a sniper shows up to spoil the fun. While Sandford's usual hero, Lucas Davenport, is a sophisticated and suave solver of crimes, Flowers is more plodding, but no less heroic. Like Lucas in his early appearances, Flowers is a definite Tom Cat with an eye for the ladies. This fast-paced mystery contains one of the finest shoot-outs in modern detective fiction with Flowers coming off as a fearless fighter as he participates in a DEA raid on a drug lab. One of the most engaging features of the novel is the camaraderie among law enforcement types that permeates the book. Sandford has Lucas Davenport make only brief appearances in this outing, appearances in which Davenport generally comes off as annoyed at Flowers for bothering him too early. Still, Sandford has another winner with the Flowers character and I look forward to Virgil's next adventure. Before Sandford pens that one, I'd like to seem him resurrect one of his earliest and greatest crimer solvers, Kidd. Armed with today's staggering technology, a Kidd mystery would be irresistible.

I listened to Dark of the Moon, the first novel in the Virgil Flowers series, four years ago. Six of the eight Flowers novels an 13 of the 26 Davenport novels are in my Audible library. I have preordered Escape Clause which will be released in a few hours. Although Davenport appears in all of the Flowers novels, I prefer Davenport to Flowers. Like most of John Sandford's books Dark of the Moon is excellent, but Sandford is far from being in the elite group of modern detective writers; he seldom writes 5 star novels. This certainly is not one. Worthwhile? Yes! Special? No!

I liked this story a lot. I loved the mystery and the way it kept me guessing right up until the very end, and in this book, I was guessing literally until the last couple of sentences which was a nice twist. I liked getting to know Virgil, I have started listening to the next book.

My experience with any series (books or television) is that the first book or first episode aren't as good as the rest of the series. I've learned to give it time for the character to develop. This series shows a lot of promise.

The narrator was a little too monotone for me. After listening to 17 books read by Dick Hill, I'm a tough critic there.

There were just a couple things that were annoying in the story--I didn't love the part where he is writing a mystery book on the side. I got a little confused each time that happened.

I also didn't find his womanizing charming. I get that for a detective's character to be developed that it needs some flaws, but there were a couple of comments about women that made me go "ewww." Hopefully that part of his character gets down played in future books, or made sexy or something instead.